West Virginia Admitted to the Union
West Virginia's admission to the Union on June 20, 1863, marks a unique moment in American history, as it occurred amid the turmoil of the Civil War. The state was formed from the northwestern part of Virginia, where dissatisfaction with the state's alignment with the Confederacy spurred a desire for independence. Early movements for separation emerged during the Revolutionary War, but it wasn't until the Civil War that these efforts gained significant traction. The region's distinct economic and social characteristics, such as smaller farms and less reliance on slavery, contributed to tensions with eastern Virginia.
After a series of conventions, the "Restored Government of Virginia" was established in Wheeling, leading to the creation of the state of Kanawha, later renamed West Virginia. In accordance with constitutional requirements, Virginia's loyal government approved the separation, and Congress ultimately granted statehood. President Abraham Lincoln endorsed West Virginia's admission as a necessary wartime measure, arguing that it supported constitutional principles. The state’s first governor, Arthur I. Boreman, was inaugurated soon after its entry into the Union, highlighting the significant political shifts occurring during this tumultuous period. West Virginia's creation not only reflects regional divisions but also illustrates the complexities of loyalty and identity during the Civil War era.
West Virginia Admitted to the Union
West Virginia Admitted to the Union
On December 31, 1862, Congress passed an act providing for the admission of West Virginia to the Union as an independent state on condition that certain changes be made in its proposed constitution. Those changes were made, and on April 20, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation that admission should take effect 60 days later. Thus, West Virginia entered the Union as the 35th state on June 20, 1863.
West Virginia's admission to the Union was unusual since it was born out of the Civil War. The movement for independence from Virginia, which the state was originally part of, originated long before June 20, 1863, extending back into the early history of this country.
Artifacts, skeletons, and numerous conical-shaped mounds found in West Virginia, especially along the Ohio and Kanawha Rivers, indicate that the area was settled by the prehistoric Mound Builders. By the late 17th century, when European settlers began to appear in the region, less sedentary tribes regarded this mountainous territory (traversed by three major native trails) primarily as a convenient hunting area. Permanent European colonization came fairly late and was the result of pressure exerted by the English-French rivalry over possession of the Ohio River valley. The English struggle for control of the region began in 1671, when Major General Abraham Wood, a seasoned frontiersman, sent an exploratory party from what is now Petersburg, Virginia, to study “the ebbing and flowing of the waters on the other side of the mountains.” Captain Thomas Batts crossed the Allegheny Mountains and may have traced the course of the New River as far as the falls of the Great Kanawha. About the same time, René-Robert Cavelier de La Salle and other French explorers traversed the Mississippi River and its tributaries, planting colonies near the mouth of the Ohio River.
Both powers were determined to manipulate the nomadic native tribes for purposes of trade and strategy. Scores of traders and trappers passed through sections of what is now West Virginia in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. In 1716 Governor Alexander Spotswood of Virginia and 30 cavaliers crossed the Blue Ridge Mountains and may have reached what is now the West Virginia county of Pendleton. According to tradition, the first permanent nonnative settlement in West Virginia was made in 1731 by a Welshman, Morgan Morgan, on Mill Creek in Berkeley County. Within a few years, ambitious and resourceful Welsh, Scotch-Irish, and German pioneers, trekking from Pennsylvania and Maryland, had occupied the area along the rivers emptying into the Potomac River from the south. Much of this land, some of which was surveyed by George Washington when he was a young man working as a surveyor, technically belonged to Lord Thomas Fairfax as proprietor of the Northern Neck of Virginia.
The English eventually triumphed over the French, and the native tribes (who had mostly sided with the French) were forced to sell an immense area of land that included West Virginia to the British. The large-scale Trans-Allegheny migration that followed triggered both vigorous tribal resistance and a royal proclamation barring colonists from settlement west of the Alleghenies. Nevertheless, an estimated 25,000 to 30,000 immigrants spilled over the mountains to settle the upper Ohio River Valley before the American Revolution. The first United States census, taken in 1790, showed a population of 55,873 for the region of West Virginia.
As early as 1776 the separatist tendencies of the western Virginians gave rise to thoughts about breaking off from eastern Virginia and establishing a new colony to be called Vandalia. Neither this plan nor subsequent schemes to found a state of Westsylvania in 1783 materialized. The history of western Virginia from the end of the Revolutionary War to the outbreak of the Civil War revolved around the increasingly bitter division between the eastern and western sections of the region. The two areas differed in many respects. Rolling hills and vast plantations characterized the Tidewater and Piedmont parts of Virginia in the east, offering a striking contrast with the mountainous Allegheny and Trans -Allegheny sections, where small-scale, diversified farming prevailed. The Anglican and Episcopalian slave-owning gentlemen farmers of primarily English origin who inhabited eastern Virginia tended to look down upon the German, Scotch-Irish, and Welsh frontiersmen of western Virginia who owned few slaves and belonged to dissenting religious sects. The two groups differed radically on matters such as taxation, public improvements, and the basis for political representation.
West Virginia's dissent was not alleviated by the changes made in the Virginia constitution in 1830 and 1851. Bitterness and friction mounted steadily, and the intensified regional controversy over slavery (with eastern Virginians for and western Virginians against the institution) sparked the final crisis. In response to the firing on Fort Sumter in April 1861, the Virginia convention, meeting at the capital of Richmond, threw in its lot with the Confederacy and passed an ordinance of secession from the Union. There was much dissatisfaction in the west, with two-thirds of western Virginia's representatives voting against the measure. Meetings of protest were held, and on May 13, 1861, delegates from 26 western counties and what is now Frederick County, Virginia, met at Wheeling and called a convention to meet on June 11. At this second Wheeling convention, representatives from 34 counties branded the Virginia secession null and void, and declared the state government offices at Richmond vacant-in effect announcing their independence. Following the passage of a resolution that called for the organization of the “Restored Government of Virginia” on the basis of loyalty to the Union, they elected Francis H. Pierpont as provisional governor. Waitman T. Willey and John S. Carlile were named as Virginia's two United States senators and were admitted to the Senate in Washington, D.C,. replacing Virginia's former United States senators, who had followed their state into the Confederacy.
On August 20, 1861, the second Wheeling convention voted 48 to 27 to create the new state of Kanawha, as it was first called, containing 39 western counties. The decision was overwhelmingly approved in a popular referendum on October 24. In late November 1861, another convention met at Wheeling to draft a state constitution. One of the convention's acts was to discard the name Kanawha in favor of West Virginia. It also decided the boundaries of the new state. Since it was of great economic and military value to control that area of northern Virginia crossed by the main line of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad on its route west, it was deemed advisable to add to the western counties an additional parcel of eastern counties, thus accounting for the irregularly shaped “eastern panhandle” of present West Virginia. Other additions subsequently enlarged the state to its present dimensions.
In fulfillment of the federal Constitution's requirement that “no new States shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State…without the consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress,” the legislature of Virginia's “restored government” (namely the government at Wheeling, which was loyal to the Union, as distinct from Virginia's Confederate regime at Richmond) gave formal assent to the separation of West Virginia from Virginia. Once Congress voted to admit the new state of West Virginia, the fate of the new political entity rested with President Abraham Lincoln. After careful debate the president justified the action as a war measure and remarked, “It is said that the admission of West Virginia is secession. Well, if we call it by that name, there is still difference enough between secession against the Constitution and secession in favor of the Constitution.”
West Virginia's constitution was overwhelmingly ratified by the people of the region on March 26, 1863. Lincoln issued his proclamation of the new entity's impending statehood on April 20, and on June 20, 1863, after new state and county officers had been elected, West Virginia officially entered the Union. The so-called restored government of Virginia left West Virginia and relocated to Alexandria, Virginia, a suburb of the federal capital of Washington, D.C., and occupied by Union troops. Arthur I. Boreman was inaugurated as West Virginia's first governor and established his government at Wheeling. During the Civil War, West Virginia was the scene of countless raids and sharp political splits within families. For example, Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson, a native of what is now West Virginia, remained loyal to Virginia and played a leading role as a top-ranking Confederate general, while his sister remained a confirmed Unionist.